My letter to the South China Morning Post:
Alex Lo should speak for himself when he says that most men only watch the Fox news channel to see the “foxy anchors” and for “that nano-second when they re-cross their legs and change their sitting position…”. (They only watch Fox for the comments. Alex Lo, “My Take”, 19 October.).
He really gives himself away here.
The anchors on Fox that Lo mentions — Ainsley Earhardt, Heather Childers, Sandra Smith and Megyn Kelly — are all smart and educated women. Between them they have won many journalism awards. Kelly, for one, was a senior partner at a law firm and since moving to Fox she has hit hard not just “hapless Democrats” (Lo’s term), but also at those on the right — her jousts with Karl Rove and Donald Trump being two famous examples. Childers, sneers Lo, was a beauty queen. For this she deserves to be derided?
I say this as someone more of the left than the right. My default TV news setting is the BBC. But I also turn to Fox from time to time. They are indeed to the right and some have called them a mouthpiece for the Republican party. They’re not really that, but even if they were, so what? We — including Lo, I assume — prefer two-party or multi-party systems of government. So why should we expect that all TV news should be from one view only, those to the left, such as HLN, CNN, MSNBC? I’ve never understood why people want to see only that which echoes their own views.
By the way, I note that Lo’s “leg-crossing” genre of political reporting is just as much alive and well on left of centre HLN network. What about it, Alex? How about slamming them too? Or are the Hotties at HLN to be given a free pass, unlike the Foxies at Fox?
The only “crime” of these female anchors at Fox, according to Lo, is that they also happen to be attractive. Surely, for a man of the principled Left, it should be out of bounds to launch ad hominem attacks on women for their looks, good or bad.
This column of Lo’s is arrogant, creepy, condescending, misogynist and hypocritical crap (and that’s not ad hominem!). He should be ashamed of it.
My suggestion to Lo comes from the title of his daily column, “My Take”. Open mouth. Take out foot.
